In order to provide mission critical Push-to-Talk (PTT) group calls in a 3GPP LTE (Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution) communication system, it is desirable that wireless resources be guaranteed so that such resources are always available when needed. However, this can be an issue when a large number of emergency responders are at a same location, for example, an incident scene, resulting in available bandwidth that is insufficient to provide all of the emergency responders with a bearer. For downlink communications, such bandwidth constraints can be resolved through the use of broadcast, for example, and LTE eMBMS (Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) service. However, for uplink communications, there is no way to share a single uplink bearer among the members of the group. If every user who is a group member is assigned an uplink bearer, this can block other important uplink traffic due to a lack of available resources for such other traffic, even if most of the users do not transmit.
One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common and well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required.